Nicole Peeler - [Jane True 01] (20 page)

“Linda even hinted that she and Jason had started going out and maybe
that’s what pushed me over the edge. As for why they did it, Linda’s motivation
was obvious. She’d always carried a torch for Jason and she is nearly as
delusional as one of her romance-novel heroines. As for Stuart, he and Jason
had
never
been close when Jason was alive. I think Stu used his cousin’s
death as an opportunity to cause drama because he just likes being an asshole.
Especially to girls who can’t beat him up for talking shit.

“Mercifully,” I said, trying to get my anger under control, “I didn’t
actually have to see any of the news coverage at the time. I was lying in a
hospital bed, with my arms and legs tied down so I couldn’t ‘self harm.’ Not
that people weren’t keen to fill me in on what I had missed upon my eventual
release back into polite society.”

Ryu shook his head, his face sad. “What then?”

“Straight from the hospital, I was put into the loony bin for
observation.” I smiled at him, a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “If I hadn’t
been suicidal before, I most certainly was now. I couldn’t imagine living
without Jason; it was unthinkable. So I pandered right to their image of me: a
dark soul bent on destroying herself and all she loved.

“Of course, it never occurred to me to tell the truth. That I had gone
for a
swim
. That, after all our years spent bound up so close, the one
secret I had from Jason was the fact that I somehow managed to survive the
freezing cold water and the extreme tidal range of our little patch of the
Western Passage to go
swimming
. Naked. Because of course I hadn’t been
wearing my wet suit the night Jason died, which fit in really well with my own
mother’s apocryphal public display of flesh. A TV-movie writer couldn’t have
come up with a more symbolic suicide attempt: abandoned daughter attempts to
end her own life in a parody of her mother’s scandalous appearance in their
small town.”

I was pretty much ranting at this point, but Ryu just listened quietly.

“I remember one particularly bad day in the psych ward, after I’d given
drowning myself in a toilet the good old college try, and I was strapped down
and sedated. I woke up to my dad sitting next to me. He was crying. I
whispered, ‘Just tell them.’ I was so tired of fighting and I think my barbiturate-addled
brain thought that if we went ahead and told them I was swimming, they would
let me out. And then I could finally kill myself in peace.

“My dad just squeezed my hand and I knew that nothing would ever be
said. If I hadn’t had a matching set of fuzzy cuffs binding me to the bed I
would have knocked his block off. Of course, now I realize that my father
telling people his crazy daughter wasn’t really crazy because she actually swam
in the ocean, just like her mom had, would only have gotten him his own
vacation in the empty bed next to mine. But it did take me a while to forgive
my father his silence, and I really regret that.”

I was annoyed to find I was crying again, thinking about how much I had
hurt my dad. He’d done the best he could for me, and there was no “right” way
to act in a situation like that. Not to mention that if I hadn’t been in the
hospital I
would
have killed myself, without a doubt.

And just think
, I told myself,
if I’d died, I would
have missed all the great things Rockabill had in store for me when I got back
.

“That must have been terrible,” Ryu said, hugging me tight. “I can’t
imagine being cooped up like that in some human hospital. Especially when I
knew I wasn’t actually crazy.”

I laughed. “Oh, that wasn’t an issue. I
was
totally crazy. I
wasn’t joking about the toilet, and that was only one of about seven suicide
attempts.” I raised my scarred wrists to him. “These aren’t football injuries.”

Ryu’s eyes were sad as he traced my scars first with a finger and then with
his lips. “How did you do these?” he asked, finally. They were pretty jagged.

“I managed to sharpen a fork, believe it or not. But I was on some
serious medication, so I didn’t feel it at all.” He grimaced.

“And then there was my invisible friend,” I added.

“What friend?”

“At night, this mysterious stranger would come keep me company. Not in a
creepy, abusive-nurse way,” I added hastily, seeing the look on his face. “He
couldn’t have been real. He wasn’t on the ward and he didn’t work there. He
only came at night—when the medication was extra strong.” I smiled; the
memories were oddly happy ones, despite the circumstances.

“Really,” Ryu said, his expression strange. “What did this stranger look
like?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. Like I said, I was on some strong drugs. I know he
was big and a man. I couldn’t ever really see him, for some reason. When I’d
try, everything would get fuzzy. Probably because he didn’t actually exist,” I
reminded Ryu.

“And what did he do when he was there?”

“Oh, he’d just hold my hand and tell me stories. They were amazing. Sort
of like fairy tales but not any of the ones that I’d ever heard. I know this
sounds crazy, since the guy was obviously just a barbiturate figment or
something, but I swear he kept me from
really
going nuts. I would have
been totally potty if he hadn’t been there. Maybe he was the living embodiment
of Prozac, come for to carry me home.” I laughed, but Ryu still looked somber.
He’d wanted the truth, but maybe he hadn’t expected me to admit to knitting
with only one needle—which made me suddenly nervous.

“So, umm, you don’t have to be scared or anything,” I told him,
nervously.

“Sorry?” Ryu asked, his face gone from somber to confused.

“I’m fine now. You don’t have to worry about me going off the deep end.
No bunny boiling in my future, or anything. I promise not to impale both eyes
on chop sticks if you take me out for Chinese food. Or jump out of a moving
vehicle. Or steal your shoelaces to strangle—”

Ryu put his finger on my lips to stop my anxious patter.

“Jane, be easy. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you were mad with
grief. And I hate that you had to endure all of that, alone. You should have
been better taken care of by our kind.”

I shook my head. “I don’t deserve pity,” I said. “I’m the one that lied
to Jason. He’s the one who is dead. If you pity anybody, pity Jason. He should
never have died that night.”

Ryu frowned. “I suppose you’ve heard a million times that his death
wasn’t your fault?”

“If I had a nickel, etcetera,” I replied, my tone short.

“Well, his death wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it really was. It would have taken me one sentence to tell him
that I swam at night. Two to explain. Jason loved me no matter what, but I’d
been taught that my swimming was such a big secret.” I said these words as if
they were fact, but I was mercilessly hitting my own most sensitive nerve.

Because what if Jason hadn’t accepted your swimming?
I
thought.
What if you feared the truth would be that last proverbial straw
and would drive him away?

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” I soldiered on. “He’s gone, and I’ve lived
with his death for so long that it’s like… a binding on my book. I need to move
on. Even if I can’t forgive myself, I need to move on.”

“Jane, honey, is that realistic? How can you move on from Jason if you
still blame yourself for his death?”

I shook my head. “I just have to, Ryu. I can’t live like this any
longer…” to my horror, my voice was breaking.

“Oh, Jane.” Ryu sighed, rolling me over so I was lying on top of him. He
ran his hands through my hair. “What am I going to do with you?”

Distract me,
I thought, fiercely blinking back my
tears.
Reinvent me. Get me out of my own head; rescue me from my life…
For a second, I pictured myself as Mina and Ryu as Gary Oldman’s Dracula. The
young hot one, mind you, with the long hair, rather than the old guy with the
weird boob wig.

“Take me away from all this death,” I’d say, as I slurped on his chest.
But then I’d try to eat all my friends, who would have to burn my forehead with
consecrated cookies. So that’s not the best option… as well as the wrong
definition of a vampire, apparently.

“So, what
are
my options?” I inquired, finally, peering up at him
through my long bangs.

His suddenly hot eyes focused back on me as he pulled me up the hard
length of his body so that I was within kissing range.

“I could abduct you in the night and lock you away in a tower until I
have fondled away all traces of guilt and false accusations,” he said,
punctuating his sentence with a gentle kiss to the frown that had riven my face.

“Or I could make love to you, here and now, with such vigor and
intensity that you forget you even have a past, let alone remember the details
of said past.” This time he kissed the eyebrow that had shot up at his
boasting.

“Or I could do both, but include some whipped cream. And maybe those
fuzzy handcuffs they sell,” he added, when I started to smile. “A hamster or
two?” he suggested, as the smile turned to a hesitant giggle.

“Hamsters it is, then,” he concluded, holding me tight for a proper kiss.

CHAPTER TWELVE

R
yu’s
BlackBerry cut through my dreams like a scythe. He was still awake; he’d been
reading while drinking a glass of wine when I’d last opened my eyes. I was
completely prepared to fall back to sleep when he answered it, but the tone of
his voice startled me into awareness.

“Are you certain?” he asked, his voice dark.

“I’ll be right there,” he said as he hung up, already pulling on his
trousers.

“…whathebugger?” I mumbled, sitting up and rubbing my eyes blearily.

“That was Nell. It’s Gretchen,” Ryu replied, grimly, digging around in
our pile of shed clothes beside the bed for his shirt. “She’s dead.”

That little tidbit of information drove the last vestiges of sleep from
my brain. “Are you serious?” I asked, unable to comprehend what could have
killed such a formidable creature. Or the fact that garden gnomes used
telephones.

“Yes, and she was murdered in such a way as to get our attention.”

I scrambled out of bed as he threw me my shirt and jeans. I pulled on my
clothes, not bothering with underwear, and shoved my feet in my shoes as Ryu
held my coat out for me. “Where are we going?” I asked, as we left the cottage
but walked past the car.

“The bakery,” was Ryu’s only response.

I had to trot to keep up with him, my short legs no match for his long
strides. It was only about a five-minute walk from the cottages into the main
square of town, but I was breathing hard by the time we got there. Surrounding
Tanner’s Bakery were a bunch of squad cars, a fire engine and a paramedic’s
van, and the coroner’s hearse thingy. There were also quite a few Rockabill
natives standing across the street, in various states of undress, watching the
activity. I saw Marge and Bob Tanner, who owned the bakery, and my heart went
out to them. They were nice folk, both as plump and soft as their famous potato
buns, and Marge was sobbing into Bob’s shoulder. They were wearing matching
mauve bathrobes over striped pajamas.

Ryu was tense as we joined the crowd, and I knew it must be killing him
not to be able to do anything. I didn’t know how powerful glamours could be,
but whammying a crowd, all of whom already had their whole attention fixed to a
single situation, must have been too much even for him.

I took his hand as we watched them carry a figure wrapped in a black
body bag out of the bakery and into the coroner’s van. Ryu’s fangs were
extended and he gave a very catlike hiss as they drove away. Then he looked
around as if searching for something and drew me away down the street into the
alley that separated the Trough from our little local cinema.

It took my eyes a second to adjust to the gloom as we walked to the back
of the alley and out behind the Trough’s rear entrance, but then I saw Anyan
waiting near the Dumpster.